1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method, of making individually coated, baked edible cores, and an apparatus therefor.
2. Description of Related Art
Coated edible cores, or coated food particulates, comprise a generally cohesive core food product, such as a nut or piece of fruit, which has been coated with a material that modifies or enhances the flavor or texture properties of the core, and cooked. Examples of coated edible cores are chocolate coated nuts, honey roasted nuts, and chocolate covered raisins.
Some coated edible core products must be baked, fried, or otherwise dehydrated at high temperatures in order to provide a dried, expanded coating. Fried snack products have become less desirable from a consumer standpoint in recent years, and baked goods have shown increased popularity. Baked snack products can be produced using a farinaceous dough. Problems arise, however, when edible core materials are coated with a farinaceous dough and dried on a belt in a traditional single pass or multi-pass oven. In particular, the coated core pieces tend to adhere to one another in clumps at the conclusion of the baking process. If the adhered core pieces ate dislodged from one another after baking, significant product breakage and non-uniformity of the final product result. If the core pieces are left together, difficulties are encountered in metering, packaging and quality control.
The prior art has attempted to solve this problem in several ways. One prior art method is to severely underload the oven belt with coated core materials such that the cores are dried on the belt in monolayer, not touching one another. Although this method might accomplish the goal of reducing the agglomeration or sticking together of the core pieces, it unduly limits throughput, as the oven belts have the ability to be loaded with coated core materials several layers thick, and increases the cost of making these products because the oven is not operating at full efficiency or capacity. Another prior art method is to bake the coated edible cores in a rotating kiln-type oven. This type of oven is basically a rotating drum that constantly agitates the coated core materials as they cook. While this method may reduce agglomeration of the core pieces, it also suffers from problems of reduced throughput and increased capital and operational cost of the equipment used. Furthermore, existing equipment cannot be readily or easily modified to provide a rotating kiln-type oven. Still another prior art method is to provide a physical barrier on the outside of the farinaceous dough coating, such as sesame seeds, to prevent the coated core materials from sticking together during processing. This method has the drawback of providing a completely different product than simply an edible core material with a farinaceous dough coating and severely limits the range of products that can be created. Finally, the prior art has attempted to reduce the stickiness of the core materials by providing a coating with very low moisture. This method is inadequate because one of the reasons farinaceous dough-based products are so desirable for consumers is that the dough will expand and become flaky as the water in the dough forms steam and escapes from the dough. Limiting the amount of water in the dough, therefore, will prevent the coated core material from forming a desirable expanded, crispy texture.
It would be an improvement in the art, therefore to provide individual baked edible core materials with an expanded, crispy coating that is produced with minimal capital and operational costs.